Among the claims consumers have heard about POM Wonderful’s pomegranate juice:

Medical studies have shown that drinking 8 oz. of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice daily minimizes factors that lead to atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in the arteries) a major cause of heart disease

and

After drinking 8 oz. of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice daily for at least two years, these men experience significantly slower PSA doubling times

(That second claim relates to prostate cancer.) This week an administrative judge issued a cease and desist order to prevent pom wonderful from engaging in deceptive advertising practices, writing that:

The deceptive advertising claims found to have been made in this case pertained to serious diseases … including cancer

POM Wonderful has been the most aggressive among a horde of brands touting health benefits, (including Nutella, which was successfully sued by two Moms to keep it from calling itself healthy). But POM isn't just a brand behaving badly, or an isolated incident. It's the result of a law that has systematically made it harder for the U.S. consumer to understand the real effects of dietary supplements.

THE BIGGER PROBLEM: THE DIETARY SUPPLEMENT ACT

There is no doubt that something in our collective psyche loves the idea that food supplements might be a more natural way to cure diseases - and some supplements might even do that. But consumers are more likely to be bewildered than ever thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.

The law, enacted to protect the fast-growing supplement industry from increasing FDA scrutiny, allows manufacturers to communicate the health benefits of dietary supplements directly to consumers without FDA clearance as long as the supplement does not promise to treat or cure any illness. It also dramatically broadened what is considered a dietary supplement to include substances not found in the human diet like hormones (DHEA and Melatonin, for example).

While the FDA and FTC can still attack dangerous substances or false claims, the law allows manufactures to tout health-enhancing benefits of their supplements based on individual, manufacturer-sponsored studies. As Forbes contributor David DiSalvodocuments, individual studies can be flawed. They can also be downright fraudulent, as with the 1998 UK autism study that spawned an anti-vaccine movement that has resulted in a resurgence of measles and other preventable diseases.

Supporters of the supplements act claim that the FDA and FTC still have enforcement power and that they can stop false claims and ban dangerous supplements. But the FDA is subject to continual budget pressure and never really had the manpower to tackle any but the most visible and egregious offenders. Indeed, the case for enacting the DSHEA act was partially made on the FDA's inability to evaluate a flood of new health claims in a timely and cost-effective manner. But the end result of the DSHEA Act is visible to everyone: listen to an hour of drive-time radio, or peruse the back pages of a magazine and you’ll find a host of supplements claiming miraculous health benefits with dubious scientific proof.

All of this harms both consumers and brands. Consumers are not in a position to critically evaluate drug trials. For instance, many consumers do not consider the difference in credibility between small-scale manufacturer-sponsored studies and large double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies that are the medical community's gold standard.

Faced with a barrage of sensational claims relating to everything from weight loss to impotence, we lose a measure of trust in all brands. This loss of goodwill effectively becomes a tax born by ethical brands as well as dodgy ones, as gaining consumer trust and loyalty becomes more difficult and more expensive for all.

POM WONDERFUL'S RESPONSE: NOT WONDERFUL

POM Wonderful advocates may claim that POM was trying to do the right thing by funding $35 million in clinical studies. The administrative judge, however, weighed the evidence and found a number of the most significant health claims to be unsupported, and the advertising deceptive. Moreover, POM Wonderful’s response to the ruling is even more disturbing. The thousand-odd word press release essentially claims victory without even mentioning the cease and desist order, based on the fact that the judge did not throw out every single POM Wonderful claim and did not require FDA prescreening of future advertising.

Corporate communications groups rarely get high points for transparency, but this release shows a singular lack of accountability to the consumer that hurts POM Wonderful, its sister brands and the consumer brand community as a whole.